The Grizzly at Point Defiance
A silver-tip grizzly escapes its cage at Tacoma's Point Defiance Park, wounding three park employees before being put down to protect the zoo’s deer and elk.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Park Superintendent E. H. Roberts and two of his assistants were painfully injured in an attempt to recapture a small grizzly bear which had escaped from its cage at Point Defiance Park yesterday afternoon. The bear had loosened some of the bars of the cage by eating away the wooden floor. The departure of the bear was first noticed by Park Assistant J. O. Jellberg, when the animal was still within 200 feet of the cage. Thinking he could overpower the bear, he rushed up to her and attempted to lead her back to the cage. At first she resisted good-naturedly, but soon became angry. Then, with a vicious growl, she buried her teeth in Jellberg's right arm. Assistant Martin O. Kongslie, who was nearby, came to Jellberg's rescue. Superintendent Roberts then appeared and placed a rope on the bear. A red-hot scrap resulted during which the bear succeeded in escaping, after slightly wounding all three of her would-be captors. As soon as she regained her liberty, she quickly severed the rope with her teeth and ran up the park in the direction of the deer. Realizing there was imminent danger, Superintendent Roberts secured a rifle and dispatched the animal, after firing four shots. Bruin was a silver-tip grizzly, a native of Alaska. She was brought down from there about a year ago, when a little cub. Mr. Roberts stated that he is satisfied that he pursued the best course when he killed the animal, as he is certain that had he left her at large in the park all night she would have killed all of the deer and elk there.
“Thinking he could overpower the bear, he rushed up to her and attempted to lead her back to the cage.”
Point Defiance Park remains a crown jewel of Tacoma, but it has long since moved away from the 1904 model of keeping exotic, large-predator captives like Alaskan grizzlies in wooden-floored cages. The park’s zoo and aquarium have evolved from a turn-of-the-century menagerie into a conservation-focused institution, reflecting a major shift in public sentiment regarding animal welfare.
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